Artificial Intelligence

     The technological singularity sounds great at first. What could be so bad about a run-away super intelligence? The problem is that a doomsday scenario of a robots taking over the world coincides with the idea of technological singularity being accidentally created and set free to self improve.  I believe that the technological singularity hypothesis only considers a form of technology that is created with no fail-safes. A super intelligence that is created with no barricades could be very dangerous. If its only purpose is to self improve then humans will eventually no longer be needed and might even get in the way of self-improvement. In my opinion, a form of intelligence created by humans will be created with the intent of helping humans thrive. I think a technological singularity that improves the lives of humans will be created before one that only has itself in interest. It is much more difficult to create something that will be able to self improve and be a sentient being, than something that can self improve with pre-existing human friendly motives.

     This is where I start to think about how Stelarc's work is a more accurate representation of our future. Humans are going to be the original creators of this technology so it should have humans in its best interest at least in the beginning. His work shows how humans can interact with even the technology of today's world. 

     Ray's Kurzweil makes some pretty interesting predictions about the future of technological advancements. Many of these predictions are related to biological technology advancements.  Many of his predictions would seem reasonable if the time scale was in the hundreds of years, but he believes these advancements will be made in the next 25 years! Kurweil makes his predictions for the near future because of his considerations of Moore's Law. Technology increases at an exponential rate which means advancements happen sooner than expected many times. One of my favorite examples of this is the short time it took for humans to go from the Wright brother's first flight to NASA's moon landing. Only 66 years between the first time we left the ground to the first step on another celestial body!

     If humans continue to follow Moore's Law, it will not be long before we are uploading our brains to become immortal. The problem that we face today is that our brains are constantly changing and making new connections which makes it difficult to just make a copy of our brain to function properly. I believe that we would still be the same person if we did find a way to be uploaded into a new form or body. Our bodys are constantly changing anyways. A one year old looks nothing like him/her-self after he/she grows up, but we still consider them to be the same human their whole life. How is this so different than just changing your body form immediately?

Do games count tho?

As we are learning and dissecting exactly what digital humanities are, this week we looked at a few pieces that are a part of a genre of literature called interactive fiction. This genre is another part of literature where a gaming element is added to enhance the way stories are being told. It still has a interactive element, but these games can be constructed to have a plot or it can be more of an observant experience for the reader. For example some games within digital literature can come in text form. Basically, the player will be emerged in a world that is only imagined through words.

Within the first week of learning about games within literature, Zork was one of the first genre of games we looked at. It's a text base game that was referenced in the first paragraph. Zork was created by the first gaming companies called, Infocom. Infocom became a huge hit within the early 80's. It was seen as something revolutionary because a plot was added and in a way, the reader can now become the player. With every game came these objects called "feelies", which were certain materials that came along with the game. This helped really helped the player feel like they were in the game. Referencing back to Zork, The player is emerged into a text based world and every action is a command that the player will type in. Below is a walkthrough of the game Zork. As shown in the video everything that is done in the game depends on the actions typed in. This definitely displays a similarity to the digital narratives we have been looking at. Interactivity is what these two genres have in common. Another example of gaming would be games that actually have graphics and images. 

ZORK WALKTHROUGH VIDEO

One of the games we looked at that included sound and images was called "That Dragon, Cancer". The addition of graphics and sound makes the plot of the game more effective. Once again its a digital narrative but on a different format. Video games can make understanding the story easier because you are shown these different images and various symbols of a video game can easily be pointed out. for instance, in he video game, "That Dragon, Cancer", the player is viewing a child who seems to have cancer and each part of the game is the child interacted with different people. As the player gets closer and closer to the end, it helps us understand that we are getting closer and closer to maybe the death of the child. That's why video are powerful because everything is being shown to the player. You are set right there in the game either clicking away being an observer or controlling the main character of a story.

We have also looked at games that serve as messages which reflects the world of today. One of the games was called "Prison strike". This was a electronic literature game that made the player be seen as a literal eye. You were the eye that saw all the bad things that is going on within the prison system. Various use of symbolism is also used in this type of gaming. The plot is somewhat not as immerse as video games, but these type of games focuses more on the message instead of plot story. There isn't the usual protagonist v antagonist, its just the player being exposed to a certain truth that is being shown to them as they walk through the game.

This is why within the digital format of storytelling, games count as being part of the digital narratives. A story is still being told and each time the player experiences something different. They can journey through a world of imagination in Zork, or drop a couple tears for the boy in "That Dragon, Cancer". Either way the reader is being effected in some way. No matter the format a story or a message is being told. This can also be the future of literature in many years to come, or honestly it might already be the future of literature.

Uncreative Writing

Two weeks ago as a class we were introduced to an idea of transcribing various video clips that were chosen by each tribe member in the class. This was inspired by Kenneth Goldsmith, who made various methods to show the concept of authorship. Most of the pieces we looked at were self generated poems which included a variety of works put in a code and then controlled by AI to construct it as their own poem. Which then brings up the question, is literature becoming digitally modern as we move on through time? We are further reflecting on a future where the definition of a Arthur might be changed. Referring back to the article from Goldsmith, the art of transcribing was shown as he made his students watch project runway and then turn what was typed into a poem. This was shown to

Then came time for our tribe to transcribe various videos that were chosen by our tribe and other tribes in the class. In order to record each line of transcription, all tribe members were invited in a google chat. Here is a screenshot of what we were doing when the videos were playing. As you can see each tribe member were typing whatever they were hearing. No matter the typos or repetitiveness, it's all a part of the art form. As most can see, a lot of funny things were recorded and each tribe member enjoyed this activity.

The ending result was the product of what was transcribed. We put it in a google doc and editing various lines to construct a poem. Overall, actually working as if we were text generators, gave us a new point of view. Although it seems impossible, a poem can be made from a AI text generator but for now it can be highly difficult to make it look believable.

Generative Text

In Digital Humanities, we have been looking at works of generative text and bots. The pieces bring up many controversial questions that humans as a whole have difficulty answering. Before we look into these questions, here are some examples of text generators that we have looked at in class.

Sea and Spar Between by Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland is a poetry generator that includes digitized words and phrases from poetic works of Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville's Moby Dick. To explore the piece, you may type in two numbers, representing nautical coordinates, or move your mouse to explore the vast collection of generated poetry. This work brings up many questions about authorship and meaning.

Another piece of generative text is Evolution by Håkan Jonson which takes the artwork of Johannes Heldén and mimics his music and literature. The algorithm uses similar words, spacing, and dreary music as the musician/writer had created. The ultimate goal of Evolution is to pass the Turing Test, a test that looks for artificial intelligence.

In my personal opinion, Sea and Spar Between’s code has very specific phrases that are to be ran in the work. These phrases are directly taken from Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville so their credit should not be taken away. Though the programmers created the visuals and decided where to put the phrasing, Dickinson and Melville are still the authors. Evolution, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. The algorithm requires more knowledge of coding to understand. Instead of simply randomizing phrases by Johannes Heldén, it is mimicking his work to create something very different and even unique! The algorithm is essentially creating it’s own work! Does this mean the coder is the author? It is very hard to come to a conclusion and everyone has their own thoughts on this question.

Image Corruptions

Today in class we learned how to corrupt images. These are a few that I thought were neat.

Image Corruptions

Today in Digital Humanities, we learned to corrupt images. Its super fun! Here is a before and after of an image of Dan, our very own tribe member :)

Observing Multiple Elements Of E-lit through Various Works

Electronic Literature gives readers a way to interact with our literature. Before the time of computers, writings could not include animation, sound, or any sort of interaction. This changes the way a reader experiences pieces of literature and is very significant to the advancement of creative communication.
The following are examples of various pieces of Electronic Literature. 

One example of Electronic Literature is e-poetry. “The Sweet Old Etcetera” by Alison Clifford and “Puddle” by Neil Hennessy are two great pieces of e-poetry. “The Sweet Old Etcetera” was full of poems by e. e. Cummins. By moving through the piece, more and more of a beautiful landscape are revealed as well as phrases by the poet. This was an example of how we can advance on static poems. A more simple approach was “Puddle,” which creates an animation with solely words. Both “The Sweet Old Etcetera” and “Puddle” show how original poetry can be built on to create beautiful animations. These works made me see more of what poetry can be.

In one of the weeks of readings, pry’s unique take on loss and secrets was something intriguing. Just the trailer kind’ve tells you how impactful of a story this is. It has all the interactive elements like touching the screen and swiping up and down. Pinch the screen to make text in the passage large or viewing multiple clips through the piece. Although the access to it was limited, I was able to access a link to the description and view a demo of the work (http://tenderclaws.info/sheet.php?p=pry). As it seems in the work, the reader will get the protagonists point of view. For example, the main character is a war vet who lost his sight or close to losing his sight. The piece shows this as every image or every video will be from the main character's point of view.

A very interesting depiction of electronic literature is “Tailspin”. The piece tries to give you an insight on what it is like to live with tinnitus. The piece uses sounds to show the perspective of a war veteran that used to work on aircraft.  It tells the story from the point of view of a mother that has to deal with the issues of a father that refuses treatment and rowdy kids at the same time. It was interesting to me because it showed the struggle of living with tinnitus and being a caregiver to someone that has it.

This week we took a look at Pieces of Herself. I found this that this interactive piece was oddly satisfying. I liked the idea that you could choose things (pieces), that create a type of self image. It gives you private and public environments to explore and collect pieces. I felt that exploring this interactive piece, somewhat empowered me.